


Cinderella had a Wrench

by spiralicious



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/M, Interrogation, Mentioned violence, WIP Big Bang 2016, Wedding Planning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-09 00:59:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7780816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiralicious/pseuds/spiralicious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ed and Winry's impending wedding had been speculated about for months. All knew it would be the event of the year. No one expected the reason why. Not all weddings end in happily ever after, some tragically just end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cinderella had a Wrench

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cheshirejin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheshirejin/gifts).



> This is my first bang (WIP Big Bang). Thanks to Alobear for doing my art. A special thanks to Chesirejin for all of her help and encouragement and virtual head pats and to Vexed Wench for all the help, hours spent listening to me whine, and much needed ass-kicking. An extra special thanks to my betas Lynx212 and Kiramaru7. Without any of you, this fic wouldn't have happened.

Edward Elric sat motionless in the interrogation room. After fifty-seven hours in custody, he had yet to say a word. He either stared at the wall in front of him or, occasionally, laid his head down to rest on the table like he might try to go to sleep, but he never closed his eyes. Officer Kremer and Officer VanAnroy were dumbfounded. They had tried numerous interrogation tactics, but all had failed to get any sort of reaction out of the prisoner. They had been warned he had been through a lot in his short life, so normal ploys might not work, but they were also informed of his explosive temper, which was evident in his crimes, but they had seen none of it so far in his interrogation.

Officer Kremer tossed the case file on the table and sat down across from Ed. “Let's start again, from the beginning. Here is what we know.” He flipped open the file. “You were a state alchemist.”

Outwardly, Ed did nothing, but his mind raced as it flooded with images of the last few years. Thoughts of the path of blood and heartache he and his brother barely survived in their quest to find the philosopher’s stone to try to undo the damage they had done to themselves. Flashes of the people they had met and lost along the way came to him; Maes Hughes and Nina Tucker, were at the forefront. The whole thing made his soul ache. They saw so much unnecessary death and destruction by those seeking power and wealth through the use of alchemy, deceit, and politics. Being with his brother Al was what had made it bearable. They may have been wandering around half alive, maybe less than that, for years seeking the answers they needed, but they had each other. On top of that, Ed had the drive to take care of his baby brother, to get Al's body back, to push him forward.

“Then, mysteriously,” Officer Kremer flipped through the very short and heavily redacted report regarding the war with the homunculi, not that he knew that was what he was looking at, “your automail arm was suddenly flesh, your brother was in the hospital, which was shocking considering no one had seen him outside of a suit of armor before then, and you lost your ability to perform alchemy.”

Ed, minutely, clenched and unclenched his fists. He would have done anything, given up anything, to get his brother's body back. He just hadn't been prepared to deal with how difficult and frustrating the adjustment to this particular sacrifice would be. Al never understood. Alchemy had wrecked havoc on their lives for as long as he could remember and while he tried to comfort Ed, he often commented that Ed should rejoice being free of it. Al never had to do without it though.

Officer Kremer slid a picture towards Ed. It was a close up of Al from the crime scene. “Alphonse Elric, left for Xing as soon as he was deemed healthy enough for travel.”

Ed tilted his head to look down at the picture. Al was laying on a hotel room floor in the middle of a blood stained carpet. A chunk was missing from his skull and his face was bruised and swollen near the point of being unrecognizable. All Ed saw was his baby brother smiling with the sun behind him.

“Strange thing for your brother to do wasn't it? The two of you were obviously very close, working and traveling together for years, practically inseparable, and then he just leaves? A witness said he went to Xing to,” Officer Kremer had to consult the case notes for a moment, “study alkahestry. You know what I think? I think maybe he really went to get away from you.”

Ed finally made direct eye contact with his interrogator. There was an obvious threat there, though Ed made no other movements. Officer Kremer decided they were finally making progress. He continued on with his narrative.

“You continued to work for the state... and you got engaged, didn't you?”

Ed remembered the proposal he'd blundered through. He hadn't planned on doing it at that moment, maybe at all, but after all they had been through, he couldn't get on that train without doing it. She'd been lecturing him about taking care of his leg. Her telling him to make an appointment to see her was what finally did it. He asked her to spend the rest of her life with him the best way he could, equivalent exchange; he would give her half of his life for half of hers. She'd tried to negotiate, first offering her whole life and then trying to make a better deal, tripping up over the details repeatedly, in the end she'd accepted. Ed's mouth turned up in a half smile when he remembered their hug on the platform and her telling him to come back soon. It dropped when he remembered that she never actually said the word yes.

“To Winry Rockbell?” Officer Kremer slid another photo towards Ed. Visually, it was more jarring than the one of Al, since half of Winry's face looked untouched. The other half... simply wasn't there anymore, after it had been pounded into a hard edged surface repeatedly. The stump of Ed's leg where it attached to his automail throbbed.

“You had known each other quite a long time hadn't you?”

The first thing that Ed thought of was being hit in the head with a wrench. She had always been yelling at him about something as far back as he could remember; that wasn't how the game was supposed to be played, he didn't finish his milk, he didn't take care of his automail properly, why couldn't he be more careful. Ed knew it was because she worried about him, cared for him, and wanted him, and Al, to be safe. He thought it had been because she loved him. Now, he wasn't always so sure.

“Neighbors say you were always fighting. That's a lot of hostility to...”

Officer VanAnroy interrupted her counterpart by leaving her corner and sitting at the table with them. “Don't listen to him. I saw the report. That was just kid's stuff, like when a little boy pulls on a girl's pigtails, right?”

Ed eyed them both warily. They wanted him to admit to something. The wrong thing, he was pretty sure. He said nothing.

Officer VanAnroy took her turn to flip through a file. “Throughout your engagement, you were on assignment an awful lot. That must have difficult.”

Maybe he should have been home more. At the time, it hadn't occurred to him. He had always been on the road. In reality, he’d spent more time on the road than settled in any one place. To simply stay in one place never entered his mind. He remembered his home comings. Winry had always been there with a big hug, maybe a few little happy tears. It felt good to be missed. He would tell her what happened while he was gone. Sometimes he got a little carried away while acting things out. The furniture suffered for it. She listened with rapt attention, smiling at all the right parts and scolding him when warranted. He tried to have small presents for her from wherever he went. It had been hard picking the right thing. He realized he had gotten her several wrenches, but it just always seemed so perfect. Eventually, she'd yell at him over the shape of his automail leg, not that it was as bad as it had been in the old days, but he had this mental block when it came to proper maintenance. Secretly, he was pretty sure he just liked her fussing over him, even when it hurt.

He allowed a small nod towards the officer. It was difficult. He missed Winry. He missed having Al by his side. What was worse, were the small breaks at home between assignments. He didn't know what to do with himself. The longer stretches alone with Winry made him realize he didn't know how to talk to her if they weren't arguing or he wasn't assuring her that he and Al were going to make it home alive. He sort of knew that constantly picking fights with her wasn't exactly healthy, but he didn't know what else to do and she didn't take the bait quite like she used to. Ed tried other ways to make her happy, but nothing ever worked quite right. It took him forever to make the beds properly, to the point where Granny had banned him from doing it. He rushed washing the dishes and chipped them. Anytime he tried to fix anything, it went horribly wrong. Winry teased him a little and told him not to worry about it, but it was frustrating. It made him feel stupid and useless. At least on the road, he had some clue what he was doing.

Officer VanAnroy smiled. “The two of you were engaged a long time. Why was that? You two were young, but you'd known each other a long time. Locals said they thought you were a good match.”

Ed said nothing. He didn't know why, though he now had some theories. None of it mattered now really. Nothing mattered. 

“According to some of the interviews, Miss Rockbell seemed reluctant.”

Ed's nostrils flared.

“She had built quite an impressive business. It had steady growth, repeat customers, new ones from increasingly distant locations. It also seems that she repaired more than just automail. People said she would work on any kind of tool or machinery brought in, that she seemed to enjoy the challenge. She had quite the reputation. Some young women might be afraid to give that up for marriage.” Officer VanAnroy flipped through her notes while she spoke, addressing them instead of Ed.

He clenched his fists. He would never do that. Winry loved her work. Why would he make her give it up? He wanted to stand and yell in protest, but he unclenched his fists. They were trying to get to him again.

“Maybe it was something else,” Officer VanAnroy offered offhandedly, closing the file for the moment. “To build a business like that, you have to develop a certain sense of routine in your life, make sure it has some structure. A husband that is constantly coming and going is certainly disruptive all by itself, but your file certainly shows that you are pretty far from routine. According to a couple of the local busybodies we talked to, she often made excuses involving your unpredictable nature to explain why the wedding hadn't gone forward.”

Ed pushed himself back from the table a little and looked at her in confusion. Winry had never... He thought back to when he'd been home. She was always so excited to see him when he came home, especially when he first arrived. Winry couldn't always meet him at the station, so he would go find her. She was usually working on something, but she always stopped to hug him, no matter what she was in the middle of. Maybe he did initiate it sometimes, but she never complained. She liked hearing his stories. He knew she did. Sometimes he had to liven them up a little, but they couldn't all be gems. Maybe he went a little overboard in her workshop sometimes, but she knew he had a tendency to get carried away and it's not like he ever broke anything that he could remember. Sure, sometimes she was tired, but she worked a lot. She wasn't tired of him. She was, probably, getting a little frustrated about the automail thing. He could have made more of an effort than he had at taking proper care of it, but Ed knew how Winry yelled when she was really mad. It never got there, in fact, she had been complaining less. Maybe he could have gotten her fewer wrenches. But what the hell do you get a woman whose life revolves around repairing things? She'd have laughed if he'd tried to get her flowers or something. He did try to be useful. It wasn't his fault the radio exploded when he fixed it or that everything was so much fucking harder without his alchemy. She knew he was trying. Winry wanted to marry him, fuck ups and all. Ed's fists were clenched so tight, his fingernails were cutting into his palms. His stump throbbed.

“We talked to Pinako Rockbell.”

All of Ed's ire blew out. He looked at the floor. He suddenly didn't know what to do with his hands. He tried clasping them together and then setting them on his knees, before finally settling on crossing his arms across his chest.

“She had surprisingly nice things to say about you. She said she was worried about you, that she had been worried about you for some time. You seemed to be troubled, that you seemed angrier than normal, at yourself, she said you seemed too stressed,” Officer Kremer scoffed, “and that you seemed unbelievably sad. You spent a lot of time alone. She told us you tried to hide it, but you were having a lot of trouble coping with life without your alchemy, whatever that means.” The interrogating officer all but rolled his eyes at Ed. 

Ed wanted to throw the table at him. 

“Was that what this was? The poor little state alchemist couldn't cope without his alchemy and suck it up like a big boy? Did she make fun of you? Did she make the wrong joke at your failure to perform?”

Ed stared daggers at him. He tried to calm himself. He wasn't going to let them get to him, wouldn't confirm their twisted version of events.

“'Course, we forgot about your brother, didn't we? He just suddenly dropped on your doorstep out of nowhere. Seems like you and the soon to be misses were already having problems. The competition couldn't have helped.”

The day Al came home from Xing was one of the happiest of Ed's life. He finally had his brother back. It was a welcome surprise. The months with nothing, but erratic letters had been horrible. Ed delayed his next assignment as long as he could to spend those first few days with Al.

“I think my partner's wrong.” It was time for Officer VanAnroy to chime in again. “Mrs. Rockbell told us you were quite happy to see your brother, that you two shared a room. You were reluctant to leave after he arrived because you wanted to spend time with him.”

Ed nodded. He resented a little that she was trying to be his friend, but she was at least right. Al had taken the other bed in Ed's room in the Rockbell home. Ed had been renting it, but it had been their room when they were younger. It made having Al home more real, like his family was finally reunited and in place as it should have been. It would have been better if Al had gone with him on assignments too, but his little brother had always been the more settled one, and Ed hated to admit it, but it was sort of nice having him safe at home where he didn't have to worry about him.

“You two were close. Spent your whole life taking care of him as far as I can tell. He went off on a big adventure without you for months and then suddenly he's home safe and sound with no plans of leaving. You knew right where he was. It must have been a big relief.”

Ed nodded again. Maybe she did get it.

“And now, maybe you didn't have to worry about your girl so much. You could work, serve your country, and your brother would be there, making sure she was taken care of. The three of you making a nice cozy family...”

Ed laid his head on the table. He was done listening for a while.

Officer Kremer and Officer VanAnroy conferred with each other on the other side of the room, after Ed had been unresponsive for several minutes. When they sat back down at the table, Ed still had his head down with eyes unnervingly open and unfocused, staring in front of him. “Mrs. Rockbell had quite a bit to tell us,” Officer Kremer began. “Your brother and Ms. Rockbell had been spending a lot of time together in your absence. In fact, it seems your brother spent all his time either reading or entertaining your fiancé when you were gone. She claims that they both obviously missed you very much. Alphonse's stories about Xing were apparently very entertaining as well. I'm sure you heard them?” He waited several moments for Ed to respond. Not getting anything out of him, he continued, “She also overheard them venting about you quite a bit. The ignored baby brother, the neglected fiancé , it's pretty cliché, really.” He waited again, for anything, a snort, a muscle twitch, anything at all from Ed. He was waiting in vain, Ed was so motionless he could barely tell that the young man was still breathing.

It was Officer VanAnroy's turn. “I think you already know all this. And you know your brother was a pretty stand up guy, so that didn't worry you. We heard a few things about Ms. Rockbell as well, about her violent outbursts. How she easily she got worked up. We saw the holes in the wall from her throwing things. Two hot heads like you and her get together, worked up over the wrong thing, she maybe even started it and you got carried away. The whole thing was an accident. Your brother was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe she even attacked your brother and you just lost it. Anyone would understand.”

Ed shifted, moving to put his arms under his head for a makeshift pillow. Maybe he would fall asleep on them this time.

Officer Kremer tried again. “Mrs. Pinko told us a lot about your lives, Edward. Granny, you called her Granny, didn't you?”

Ed moved just enough to glare at Officer Kremer.

“Your father was never around. You and your brother were very young when you lost your mother. Both of you had been dependent on each other for so long. Living together, traveling together, working together, you were close, extraordinarily close. Your brother's time in Xing had been difficult for you; you'd never been separated like that before. I mean, I'm not one to judge, but I can see how in your situation certain lines might have been crossed, certain bonds might have been formed, and with your brother back, it might be difficult to figure out where your priorities should lie, your brother or your fiancé. It made things tense at home. You tried to have your cake and eat it too, and it backfired on you, made you mad. Totally understandable.”

For the first time since this circus started, Ed closed his eyes and slept. The screaming was louder in his dreams than he had remembered them being at the time. Winry had been the only one screaming though. Al had been reasonably calm, tried to reason with him even. He tried to explain that they hadn't meant to hurt him. It wasn't something they had planned. They hadn't even realized what they had done until they were on the train and by then it was too late. In the moment, Ed didn't recall actually hearing any of this, but according to his dream he had, and ignored it. He ignored his little brother's hands clawing at the one Ed had wrapped around his throat. He ignored Winry screaming as she tried to pull him away. He didn't ignore the things Winry threw at him when he turned on her, he just didn't really care by then. Ed didn't really remember feeling much about then, just determination and purpose. He had finally had a purpose again. 

He had missed having a purpose. He was the sort that lived for a goal and if nothing else, he’d never let any goal go unattained. 

Afterwards, he didn't even feel guilty, just exhausted, sore, and numb. Something within him had clearly broken, but it didn't really matter anymore. He could now exist in pieces because the two people he needed to be whole and unbroken for, were gone. Reliving the whole thing in his sleep did not give him more insight into his behavior or awaken any of the feelings he knew he should be feeling.

Officer Kremer shoved the table hard enough to startle Ed awake. “Nice of you to join us.”

Ed slowly blinked in response. His face throbbed. Winry had hit him with something from the motel night stand, possibly a lamp. Dreaming about it had brought back the pain with it. 

“So let's talk a bit about the wedding,” Officer Kremer flipped open his notes again. “You were the one pushing for the wedding. We've already established that Ms. Rockbell was reluctant. That couldn't have made for a very happy home?”

Ed remembered the fighting. They had never fought like that before. It wasn't really physical. They both plotted and stewed, waiting for the right moment to strike with an accusation. Most of them were ridiculous, Ed knew, but at the time, it was war. There was a point when neither of them would speak to each other for days, between assignments when he was home. When they ran out of harsh things to say to each other and outlandish accusations, they started slamming doors and abusing each other's things. Pinako had tried talking (and knocking) sense into both of them, but their wills were too great. Al had tried reasoning with him. It didn't really work though. Despite knowing better, it just always felt like Al had taken Winry's side when he should have taken Ed's. Isn’t that what brothers did? Band together, back to back… but it hadn’t happened like that. Ed had never asked Al why, maybe he should have. 

“Mrs. Rockbell said that it got worse when you were talking about the wedding. That at one point you accused her granddaughter of stringing you along.”

It had been stupid, Ed had known, but he had said it, more than once in fact. He leaned back in his chair to look at the ceiling. If she just could have told him why she hadn't made a single attempt at planning the wedding, he probably wouldn't have pushed so hard. She could have told him anything; she didn't want to get married, she realized she didn't love him like that, she thought it was too soon, they were too young, anything. He would have thrown a fit, but he would have gone with it. It was the constant “I don't know’s” that were killing him. He knew she told everyone else it was because he was gone so much, but she never told him that. She could have asked him to stay home more. He would have, if she'd asked. They both knew she was a strong enough person that she could have planned the wedding by herself. She was as stubborn and bull headed as he was. She could have laid the whole thing out and made him stick with whatever she had come up with. He had tried giving input early on, but any and everything he voiced was ignored. They had an epic argument about flowers. He tried leaving a calendar out with interesting possible dates circled. He even left a list of acceptable cake flavors. She seemed to move the list and the calendar around the house, but that was all the attention she had paid them. He had some hope when giant folders of wedding planning notes appeared on the coffee table, but those turned out to be a gift from neighbors who still had them after planning their daughter's wedding and thought they would be of some use to the young couple. He was pretty sure Winry never even looked at them.

“Couldn't of been the end of it though, was it? Everyone seems to agree that Ms. Rockbell pulled a sudden one eighty and started planning the wedding. You help her along to that decision?”

He knew what Officer Kremer was implying. Ed never coerced her like that. In a way, he was responsible for her decision though. One night after dinner, he had been harping at her to at least pick a season for the wedding if not a date. He wasn't sure why he had been so intent on her making a decision that day, any decision at all. He'd spent the better part of the afternoon earlier that day grilling her about why she hadn't made any attempts at planning at all. Maybe it had been because she hadn't been taking the bait. She didn't snipe back. She had been calm and unaffected, which just made Ed that much louder and insistent. He didn't know what had been the trigger point, but sometime right before bed, apparently Winry had had enough and she threw a book at him, and then another, and another, until the Ed had been pelted with the entire shelf. Their barking voices went out into the night, probably being heard throughout all of Resembol, talking over each other to the point of being unintelligible. This meltdown had an audience of one, Al. He had been sitting calmly, reading on the couch, when they came in and Winry launched her first book. Al tried to calm them down, him being the peacemaker that he was. He even suggested that maybe Ed should spend more time with Winry, because surely he could make that happen to help plan the wedding together since it was obviously so important to him and it would probably make Winry feel better. Ed just snapped back at him that Al was spending enough time with Winry for the both of them.

All three of them looked at each other in shock over that. Ed stepped back, feeling guilty like he had just punched his little brother. At the time, he had never thought himself capable of hurting him on purpose. He tried to apologize. The words kept dying as he opened and closed his mouth, never getting out more than a few sputtered words and syllables. Ed did the only thing he could think of at the time, he turned on his heels and left. He wandered around for quite awhile trying to figure what the hell had been wrong with him, until he finally settled on a bench at the train station to sleep out the rest of the night.

When he finally dragged himself back home, he found Winry waiting up for him, alone in the sitting room, facing where she could see the door. He could tell she had been up the whole night. She looked like hell. He tried to say something, to apologize maybe. He didn't know what he was going to say, but luckily for him, he didn't have to. Winry just wrapped her arms around him and held him tight for a long time. He hugged her back. Then, just like that, she got up and went to her room. Ed went to go check on Al. He was in their room. He didn't look like he'd slept either. He also looked guilty as hell. Ed was able to apologize this time. Al hugged him too. With that, everything had felt a little more right in Ed’s world. 

Sometime around lunch that day, Winry emerged again and announced that she had picked a wedding date. She seemed nervous and a little shaky, but Ed had been too overjoyed to question it. And things went mostly back to normal after that. Winry and Ed still bickered, but it wasn't dark and hateful anymore. So, yes, Ed had possibly helped her make her decision to go through with the wedding, but not the way Officer Kremer had implied.

Ed stuck his chin out defiantly and crossed his arms across his chest. Officer Kremer groaned and stepped away from the table for a bit. He started to pace the room. “So the little soon to be misses stepped in line and started planning for the big day. Witnesses say that during this time period she was unusually indecisive. You have any idea why that might have been?”

Ed thought about the wedding planning. Winry did change the color theme four times. None of them had been bad really, she just seemed to keep over thinking things. There was also the night he watched her argue with herself for over two hours between having roses, tulips, or lilies for the flowers. Which was far more sedate than the argument she had with herself over whether they should be red or white. None of which were nearly as frightening as the day and a half she thought her bouquet should be made of carefully selected kitchen herbs. Winry had gotten so caught up in the little details, Ed took over the guest list, which she told him he was doing wrong. She also had trouble picking a venue; she couldn't even narrow it down to inside or outside, until Ed randomly booked some place on a whim, trying to be helpful. Winry did start a fight about that, arguing how could he do something like that without consulting her. It was short lived though. When Pinako heard about it, she hugged Ed within an inch of his life, thanking him. It shocked everyone enough that the fight died there. He did remember that Winry took care of the photographer as well as the band. It took her a while to pick anyone, but that didn't seem to be because she was being indecisive, but because she kept forgetting to do it. Ed had just assumed that was part of wedding planning. He himself sampled over nineteen cakes he would have sworn tasted identical, until Pinako said she would be taking care of that, as Winry couldn't choose one either. The older woman seemed to be more frustrated than anyone else at Winry's sudden case of indecision and forgetfulness. Especially as it meant a lot of the planning burdens that should have been Winry's landed on her shoulders. Ed did what he could to pick up the slack as well, but hadn't really understood what all was supposed to go into a wedding and kept being told by both women that he was doing it wrong. The only decision that had been easy in the whole affair, was when Winry chose her dress. She insisted on wearing her mother's wedding dress. Pinako still had it after all this time. There were, however, a lot of alterations to be done to it, which Winry was still uncharacteristically lax about remembering to make it to fitting appointments. Not that Ed was allowed anywhere near any part of that area of the planning. He did eavesdrop on conversations concerning the endless choices involving veils, stockings, and shoes as well as the conversations pertaining to how Winry was to wear her hair and makeup. Pinako about gave up when Winry was asked what she planned on doing with her hair and told her, “Surprise me.” Ed didn't understand why everyone was so frustrated with her. If you asked anyone that had done it before, they would say that wedding planning was very stressful and difficult time. And if this idiot questioning him thought he had anything to do with why Winry suddenly had the attention span of a squirrel when it came to the wedding, he had obviously never been part of planning one himself.

He tilted his head to the side and noticed for the first time that Officer VanAnroy was no longer with them. Ed couldn't fathom why it would matter, but it did strike him as odd.

“So,” Officer Kremer started in again, “you've got nothing to say to that either. There was nothing at all that struck you as the least bit odd, that gave you the smallest suspicion they might do what they did?”

Ed shifted in his seat. He wasn't totally clueless, he just... At the time, he didn't really know what it meant. He'll never know the details. All he knew was that something was happening that shouldn't. Winry had stopped sleeping through the night. He could hear her leave her room and creep around the house and the scraping noise of a chair moving across the floor in the dining room. Then it would be quiet again. Ed would never know what she was doing in there, sitting all night. He wasn't sleeping well either then. Maybe he should have joined her. It never occurred to him that he would be welcome though. Someone else had been welcome though. He could hear Al get up and leave the room. His little brother had always been less than stealthy and they were sharing a room, but Al didn't even seem to be covering it up. He'd leave and Ed would listen. He could hear him walk to the dining room, the scrape of another chair being pulled out from the table, and more silence. Ed's mind tried to figure out what they could possibly be doing there in the quiet. He did have quite a fantastic imagination, but most of what he came up with, they would have to be closer than sitting across the table from each other and they certainly wouldn't be so silent about it, even if they were trying to be quiet. During daylight hours, Ed did his best to be a human wall between them. He knew it was stupid, nothing there to be jealous of, but some weird instinct, some nagging feeling, made him want to make sure they were never alone, never too close. It didn't stop it though. Al left their room at night more and more often, until it was every night. Soon, the nights weren't all that silent anymore either. Ed strained as hard as he could, but the dining room was just too far away to get more than muffled sounds. He could hear the tonal difference between chatting and laughing. It occurred to him then, he hadn't heard Winry laugh in quite a while. He could have gotten up. He could have spied on them. He could have done something, besides lying in bed, pretending to be asleep, while searching the night for out of place noises. But he couldn't. At the time, he couldn't justify a reason to. He never questioned Al about why he came back to bed so late. Ed did start making it known he was in fact awake, not that it changed anything. He also inserted himself into more of the wedding planning. He took over the menu, arguing his choices with Pinako. He dove into research, becoming an expert on tuxes, their parts, and how they should fit. Ed took an obsessive interest in place settings and made Al slow dance with him, so that neither of them would look like complete idiots come the big day.

Still things hadn't been right. He saw the looks Winry and Al shared between them, like they were two adults humoring a child, until he ran out of steam. He did try to talk to Al about that when it was just the two of them. Al didn't seem to get it. He even told him “What was the big deal about a shared look between friends?”

Everyone got absorbed into planning the wedding. That's what happens when you plan a wedding. Nothing else exists and everything else gets ignored, unless it blows up in your face. Ed didn't notice Al had stopped leaving their room in the middle of night, until it had been going on quite a while. Al was so cautious of him by then anyway, like he was afraid Ed was going to tackle him and rip him into small pieces if he made a wrong move. Ed thought he was being weird and ridiculous at the time. Maybe his brother really did know him better than he knew himself.

Winry changed too around that time. Ed only noticed it now that he was looking back and replaying things in his mind. She got quiet and started hollowing out, like her body just did everything it was supposed to on its own, like a plane on autopilot with an empty cockpit.

Al made it a practice of leaving the house before Ed woke up in the mornings and not returning until just before dinner. No one asked where he had been. Ed tried to get Al to talk to him, but all they managed to do was exchange glares and head tilts, which were a conversation of their own, but told him nothing. It certainly didn’t explain why his little brother always looked so guilty. The tension crept back into the house, rolling through each and every room like a poisonous mist.

Winry and Al had stopped sneaking around in the night, but Ed could hear Granny Pinako shuffling around toward Winry's room, every night, like clockwork. That was too far away from him to hear any conversation, but it did have him wondering what was going on. Pinako didn't take sides between the three of them though was the only reason Ed never considered they might be conspiring against him. He now wondered if she had known what the other two were going to do. Did she at least suspect? Why hadn't she told him?

Ed noticed Al wasn't just avoiding him, it was like he was trying to disappear altogether. He was nervous and fretful all the time. Al wouldn't even talk to Ed when he tried to start a conversation. He didn't seem to be talking to Winry anymore either, but he did always seem to have an eye on her, that was when he was around at all. Ed couldn't figure him out. He spent many nights glaring him down in the dark, trying to get some sort of reaction out of him, but night after night passed without so much as a grunt of acknowledgment from his brother.

The week before the wedding, everything changed again. There was too much wedding business to worry about for Ed to be concerned over absent brothers and a nervous fiancé. Ed figured they could work it out after the wedding. He was down right giddy, happier than he ever thought he could be. He and Al even started talking again, it was mostly about the wedding, but still, talking. As he looked back Ed realized he didn't remember much of Winry in that time period beyond whirls of movement, rushing here and there.

So, yes and no. Yes, Ed had been suspicious as hell that something was going on, but no in the sense that he had never once suspected they were going to do what they did.

Officer Kremer ungracefully planted himself back into the chair across the table from Ed. “Nothing, Elric? What about the wedding? Anything at the wedding tip you off? Look, I really am trying to work with you on this, kid. But these things don't come completely out of the blue.”

Ed glared at Officer Kremer for the kid remark, but otherwise said nothing. The morning of the wedding had been rushed. He hadn't even seen Winry, but far as he knew that was an old tradition, for the groom not to see the bride before the wedding. Al was being dragged back and forth between everyone working set up, so Ed had only seen his brother in brief flashes. He had been so happy. Everything and everyone around him had been in this big, golden blur. He remembered Al fixing his tie, he recalled fussing with his boutonniere, and he remembered standing at the altar, fidgeting, not having a clue what to do with himself. Then the music started to play, the big doors at the end of the aisle opened, and everything else fell away. It was all Winry. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't hear, for all Ed knew, in that moment when Winry started walking down the aisle, he ceased to exist. He'd never seen her in anything like that before, the tight bodice, the layers and layers of lace, the pearl details sparkling in the light. She just looked so amazingly  beautiful he may have forgotten to breathe. In that moment it finally sunk in that Winry was marrying him. He felt so honored, so amazed, so dizzy, so unworthy… so many things that defied any words he had at his disposal.

Then right before she stepped to her spot beside him, Al leaned in to her, grabbed her hand, and they were running. It took a few moments longer than it should have for it to fully register that his brother and Winry were running down the aisle, away from him. He started after them and tripped on his own foot half way across the aisle. His head was such a mess he didn't get up for a long time. In fact, Ed never wanted to get up. Eventually, someone pulled him off his face and to his feet. He had a very vague memory of being carried. Officer Kremer was wrong, sometimes these things really do come out of the blue.

“So she ran out on you. You can't really claim heat of the moment or whatever story your lawyer is going to eventually tell. It was three weeks later. Hell, by all accounts you didn't even go after them until a week later anyway. How heated up could you have been?”

It took three days for what happened to sink in. At least that is how long they had told him he had been sitting on the couch, barely existing and starting at the wall. It took another two days to rip apart his room and Winry's workshop. Another day to track down that they had went to the train station. Half a day to get the information of where they went from the person who sold them the tickets. The trail had gotten a little cold after that, but after two weeks of travel, questions and dead ends, he found them. One would call it a cheap hotel at best. They hadn't even bothered to use fake names. Ed didn't really know what he was going to do when he knocked on the door or when he walked into their room, but when Al just blurted out that he was sorry, Ed had punched him, before he could think it through. Only problem was, he couldn't stop punching him. This was his baby brother yet, Ed just couldn’t stop punching him. He didn't really remember doing anything else, except punching him, until he found himself sprawled out on the floor, exhausted and bloody. After that, he just sat down on the bed and waited. It was a day and a half before anyone showed up to arrest him.

Officer VanAnroy poked her head in the door, “He say anything yet?”

Officer Kremer stood and walked toward her, “Not a damn thing. Kid hasn’t so much as coughed in all this time.”

Officer VanAnroy sighed resolutely and talked to someone quietly outside the door. Ed's ear pricked at the familar voice that answered her. Officer VanAnroy walked Pinako toward the table. The feisty old woman didn't make her job easy on her. Ed looked away.

“Ed? Edward!”

Ed couldn't refuse to turn and face her, the very last person he ever wanted to face, but he couldn't make eye contact with her either.

“You have to...” Pinako paused to swallow and steady her voice. She put her hand gently on Ed's. “You have to tell them why, Ed.”

Ed wanted to run. He didn’t deserve her gentle touch so it felt like venomous little daggers digging into his skin. His face hurt. His stump hurt. For the first time since this all began, tears started working their way out of the corner of his eyes. Once they were flowing, he couldn't stop them. Not because of what happened to him, or what he did to his brother and Winry, but what he did to Pinako. She'd taken them in and treated them like her own and he was supposed to marry her granddaughter and he'd destroyed all of it. She officially had nothing left now, and all of it could be put on Ed's shoulders.

She squeezed his hand, sniffed a few tears of her own, “Edward?”

He pulled his head up, really looked at her and said, “Because I loved them.”


End file.
